072-078 Local know ARTS06
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The afternoon brought the blessing of a cool breeze that
knocked away the urban mugginess and sent airy seeds of
cottonwood trees dancing through the shade. Thunderheadswere flexing big muscles in the west, promising a drum song,
but for the moment there was other music.
In Losekamp Hall, an impressive four-story pile of hand-
hewn sandstone, somebody was playing a violin, running
through scales and then a difficult melody. The musician
was not yet a master, but somebody was in there trying hard
and making it work, mostly, letting the balm flow from the
windows of one of the signature buildings on the campus ofRocky Mountain College.
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A few steps away I spooked a handful of doves that had been pecking at the ground, making a very different kind
music. Then I found a well-thumbed copy of Shakespeares
Julius Caesar on a pew in an outdoor chapel. The name
inside the cover said Dawn Carter and I left the book there,
pretty certain shed return for it.
Classical music. Shakespeare. Historic stone buildings
surrounding a shady arbor where doves coo. This was aca-
deme. A whole grove of it.Somewhere, I realized, in lonesome prairie graves,
Montana pioneers smiled in satisfaction. Their dream was
still alive.
In fact, its more vigorous than ever.
The story of Rocky Mountain College is really the story
of three colleges, including two that opened their doors long
before Montana was even a state. The first was the Montana
Collegiate Institute at Deer Lodge, which offered its first lec-tures in 1878, when Custer was barely cold in his grave and
just a year after Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce almost made
it to freedom.
Shortly afterward, Montana Wesleyan College began
planting roots in Helena.
In Billings, where Rocky stands today, Billings Polytechnic
Institute literally carved itself from the stone of the nearby
rimrocks in the early years of 20th century, rising from a
muddy beet field to become one of the best-rated small col-
leges in the West.
Since the three institutions became one, Rocky bills itself
as the oldest college in Montana and the oldest continually
operating business. To argue with these assertions would be
quibbling and hair splitting, for Rocky, in one incarnation or
another, has been producing teachers and agronomists, musi-
cians, painters and business leaders for almost 130 years, and
some of those years have been incredibly long ones.
It is an often named and renamed college that has had
many lives, and has looked death in the face more times than
a cat and somehow come away bloodied but alive to fight
another day, former Rocky President Arthur DeRosier wrote
in a 2002 history of Rocky, a book called Courageous Journey,
authored by Lawrence Small, another former president.
Rocky isnt a big place, and if the traffic demands your
attention you could easily drive right past the campus in its
neighborhood on the west side of Billings. Even on a quiet
day, the charms of its campus are insulated from the thor-
73Big Sky Journal
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oughfares by playing fields and parking lots, accouterments
of any modern campus.
Getting a feel for the place means youve got to look a
little closer.
U.S. News and World Report did so and for nine years
has listed Rocky as one of the 10 best comprehensive colleges
in the West. And the same magazine has placed it among the
top 10 in terms of value, where you get the most learning for
your dollar.
Even the neighbors often dont give it much thought.
Michael Mace grew up in nearby Laurel and said he knew
Rocky existed, but it never made much of a blip on his radar
screen and he never thought of attending.I thought that was where the smart kids went, Mace
told me.
Hes right. Smart kids do come here. But the statement
packs a certain irony coming from Mace. Hes now the college
president and the man credited with finally putting Rocky on
firm financial footing.
Students here study a core of liberal arts, honing their
brains in a variety of disciplines; but 86 percent of them
choose professional majors ranging from education to busi-
ness, from aeronautics to equestrian studies to a variety of
sciences. Some even learn to become physicians assistants.
Rocky attracts leading scholars in the study of religion and,
while all sorts of places focus on the study of war, Rocky hosts
an institute dedicated to the study of peace, offering lessons
that range from playground dispute resolution to geopolitics.It even has a national champion ski team, and were not talk-
ing ski bums: Of the 12 people on the team, eight are academic
All-Americans.
Not bad for a campus with just 850 students, making it
smaller than many urban high schools (another 300 or so take
distance learning classes).
So while most of the world just whizzes right by, others
take notice. The student body attracts scholars and striversfrom 35 states and nine foreign countries. Dignitaries who
have trekked to Rocky range from Robert Frost to Bishop
Desmond Tutu.
All of this, right in the middle of Billings.
It might not be the Athens of the West, as early boosters
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had hoped. But Rockys in good shape today. And getting here
was an incredible slog. Money was always tight, and many
presidents spent fitful nights, wondering if theyd be able to
open the doors in the fall. But somehow, they always made
it happen, nursing the school through flu epidemics, tenures
in four different Montana towns, world wars, economic
collapses, the dust bowl years, the Great Depression and
devastating earthquakes. Rockys people always did what it
tookbegging, borrowing and even renting out dormitories
as housing for Italian prisoners of war shipped here to hoethe beet fields that once surrounded this campus. There were
times Rocky couldnt even pay the faculty, but somehow, the
doors stayed open.
The mission began in 1878 in Deer Lodge, best known
today as the home of the state prison, but, at that time savor-
ing a reputation as a more family-oriented community than
the hardscrabble mining and cattle towns around the region
the boozy, brawling towns stitched together fast from canvas
and rough-cut green timber, places that baited in miners and
speculators and gamblers, highwaymen and vigilantes and
whores looking for a quick buck and a quick exit.
Deer Lodge, on the other hand, was built from the outset
by settlers, ranchers and farmers of a Stegnerian mindset who
worked hard and looked forward to church on Sunday, peo-
ple whod planted their feet for the long haul and believed
the best rewards are to be savored at a later time. Many of
these men and women were educated and they knew the
benefits of schooling. They wanted that for their children and
they were planning to be there long enough to see their hopes
come to fruition.
So they started something called the Montana Collegiate
Institute in a vast territory that contained less than 40,000
soulsnot even half the population of modern Billings.
Clearly, those people were optimists, but they also knew
that hope alone doesnt pay much, so they bent to the chore
of building a college, just as they bent to their branding and
planting and threshing.
They werent altogether altruistic, however. Montana
territory contained a smattering of Catholic schools, and
staunch Protestants werent keen on the specter of Romishinfluences.
The plan worked for a while. Brick buildings were
erected, the sagebrush and cactus were cleared from the cam-
pus grounds. Teachers were hired, students arrived, and the
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school moved in fits and starts for several years.Meanwhile, Wesleyan was taking shape in Helena, under
the tutelage of the Methodists.
Both schools faced similar hurdles.
The creation of the states public university system in
1893 drew away both students and faculty, then World War I
erupted and the new military draft took even more students.
Eventually, the Deer Lodge campus was shuttered and the
school merged with Wesleyan in Helena, but the strugglesnever ended there either. Finally, a series of earthquakes in
1935 shattered buildings and drove the school out of town.
Staff and students packed up what they could salvage
and moved it to Great Falls but couldnt muster much support
there, eventually deciding to merge with Billings Polytechnic,
another institution with a history of staggering from one crisis
to another.
But while the challenges were similar, Poly took a dif-
ferent approach. The Deer Lodge and Helena institutions
had relied largely on support from churches and generous
private benefactors, partly in Montana but largely in the East.At Poly, too, campus bosses constantly solicited support,
but when that wasnt enough, people simply rolled up their
sleeves and innovated.
If students couldnt pay tuition, they could work some
of it off. The school owned a sizable irrigated farm that sup-
ported everything from salad greens to sugar beets to wheat.
Students ate what they grew, and the school sold sur-
pluses and seed for cash. For years students milled wheat,creating the popular cereal, Cream of the West, and shipping it
to breakfast tables around the nation. Whenever construction
was on tap, which was often, both men and women students
climbed to the nearby sandstone rimrocksBillings most
famous landmarkquarried stone, hauled it back to campus
and made buildings from it. Their work stands today in the
impressive structures that form the core of the campus.
One of them, Prescott Hall, is as impressive on the inside
as it is on the outside. One of its high-ceilinged, paneled and
book-lined rooms now serves as Maces office.
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This used to be the kitchen, he told me with a grin,
rising from an overstuffed chair to fetch pictures of the early
quarrying work. Behind him, an oversized oil painting by
J.K. Ralston portrays oxen teams muscling overladen wagons
through a creekside bog, the kind of place where it seems the
mud has no bottom.
It was, I thought, a fitting adornment at Rocky: persever-
ance against all odds, families bringing dreams, making plans
to stay and tame a wild land.
Mace, 54, isnt what youd expect to find in the office of
a university president. But he might be exactly what it needs.
Solidly built, intense and friendly, hes a businessman, not an
academic, and he knows he doesnt fit the mold.
He jokingly describes himself as a doorknob salesman,
but that doesnt quite fit. In reality, he invented the key card,
the device that looks like a credit card and unlocks the doors
in hotel rooms. His factories also manufacture doors, door-
jambs and hardware. Check into a modern hotel anywhere
in the country, and theres a 1-in- 4 percent chance youll be
using one of Maces doorknobs.
When asked to assume the role of president late in 2005,
Mace had been on Rockys board for some time. At the time
the school was $430,000 in the red. There were enough rumors
flying around that Mace found it necessary to make a public
announcement that workers would indeed be paid.
Payroll will be met, he wrote in the college magazine,
shortly after he was installed. It always will be met.
By the following June, Rocky was $1.2 million in the
black. Plus, Mace had raised enough money to grow the
schools endowment from $17 million to $24 million, greatly
increasing the amount of scholarship money available.
Yet hes dismissive of his own role.
Theres not much of a story really, he told me. We had aninstitution that was in financial trouble and we turned it around.
This was not done without pain. Some academic majors
will be eliminated. Some staff has been laid off, a decision he
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called heartrending, but Mace said he simply applied the samebusiness principles that made his other companies succeed.
Im really a nontraditional president, he said, a man who
thinks in terms of customers and return on investment.
In academia, he said, sometimes thats a bit threatening.
Perhaps so, but its working, and Mace did the job for
free, almost.
I told them Id take the job for $1 a year, he said.
Now hes planning to stay on for as long as theyll haveme, but said hell start accepting a real salary.
Hes proud of the school and believes in its mission
of training people for careers while basing their education
around a liberal arts core that trains them for life.
And for the first time in its 128-year history, Rocky is on
firm financial footing.
Rocky is at a point where well probably never have to
run a hand-to-mouth existence again, he said. Its always
had a history of financial turmoil. This is the first time weve
been this steady.And thats good news for the school, for the city of
Billings, and for future generations of teachers and artists,
aircraft pilots, racetrack managers and more.
When I left Maces office, a group had started a pickup
baseball game. Somebody connected with a pitch, and the
chink of a metal bat rang across campus, echoing off the
stone buildings and through the leafy cottonwoods.
The violinist in Losekamp Hall had knocked off for theday, and except for the ball game the campus was quiet.
But it was steady.
The pioneers were still smiling.
After living in places as varied as New York City and
South Korea, Scott McMillion returned to Montana in 1988,
where his family has lived for four generations. The author
of Mark of the Grizzly (Falcon Press, 1998), he also is a
regular contributor to newspapers and magazines.
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